Romantic Relationships 333When both heterosexual and homosexual
women and men were asked the questions
shown in Table 9.5, heterosexual women, gay
men, and lesbians all said emotional infidel-
ity was more distressing than sexual infidel-
ity (Sheets & Wolfe, 2001). Heterosexual men
said the two kinds of infidelity were equally
distressing. Thus heterosexual men were rela-
tively more upset by sexual infidelity than gay
men, lesbians, and heterosexual women.
If men—at least heterosexual men—are
more distressed than women by sexual in-
fidelity, it would make sense that men may
be more likely than women to monitor their
partner’s fidelity. Men report more suspi-
cion about infidelity and are more likely to
discover that a partner has cheated on them
compared to women (Andrews et al., 2008;
Brand et al., 2007). This was demonstrated
in a study of heterosexual dating college
students in which both partners completed
questionnaires that asked whether they had
had sex with someone else during their re-
lationship, whether they thought their part-
ner had had sex with someone else, and how
confident they were in the latter assessment
(Brand et al., 2007). Confidentiality and an-
onymity were assured. Men were fairly cer-
tain that their partner either did or did not
have sex with someone else, whereas women
expressed more uncertainty about whether
their partners were unfaithful. When the
two partners’ responses were compared (see
Table 9.6), men were much more accurate
than women in detecting infidelity (75%
compared to 41%). However, men were
slightly less accurate than women in detect-
ing fidelity (i.e., estimating that their partner
had been faithful when in fact their partner
had been faithful; 93% vs. 96%). Men are
more likely to detect infidelity than women
for two reasons (Andrews et al., 2008; Brand
et al., 2007). First, women are more likely
than men to disclose their infidelity. Second,women are more distressed by emotional in-
fidelity than sexual infidelity (Fernandez et al.,
2007). As shown in Figure 9.10, both men and
women are more upset by emotional infidelity
than sexual infidelity, but men are more upset
than women by sexual infidelity and women
are more upset than men by emotional infi-
delity. It also appears that the sex differences
are not necessarily borne out when more un-
obtrusive measures are used. When the Im-
plicit Association Test was used to determine
how negatively females and males viewed
emotional and sexual infidelity, there was no
sex difference in reaction time to linking ei-
ther emotional or sexual infidelity to positive
or negative words (Thomson et al., 2007).
However, men did make more mistakes than
women when classifying sexual infidelity
words in the presence of the positive prime.
The authors labeled these mistakescognitive
interferenceand concluded that men are more
attentive than women to sexual infidelity.
Findings for homosexual couples are
similar to those for heterosexual couples.Male FemaleSexual Emotional Sexual EmotionalDistress10
02040608050709030FIGURE 9.10 Men are more upset by sexual
infidelity than women, and women are more up-
set by emotional infidelity than men. However,
both men and women are more upset by emo-
tional infidelity than sexual infidelity.
Source: Adapted from Fernandez et al. (2007)M09_HELG0185_04_SE_C09.indd 333 6/21/11 12:40 PM